LeftTurnSignal

I learned enough to know when to call IBM for support, but with that experience it wouldn't be too difficult to find another job managing one.

I remember 12+ years ago, my old boss bitching about working on an AS/400, then he'd hire his brother (who worked on them for years) to come out to do very simple stuff for quite a high premium.

I just wish they weren't so proprietary, but at the same time, I am glad they are. It's been a love hate relationship.

Now I work with an AIX system. Unix under the hood, but IBM still has a stranglehold on it. Both tanks though.

As a kid i was always told to finish my plate, then the usual "think of the starving kids" guilt trips, and whatever else.

As an adult, I just eat smaller portions of the same garbage I ate before, and I started to lose a bit of weight. I didn't change anything else (at the time).

Now I'm working on the rest, but the biggest stepping stone for me was literally just eating smaller portions.

I still don't trust the VPNs for super sensitive stuff. For that I'll setup my own somewhere.

For most of my gaming type friends, it's always a battle of MS vs Sony every single console cycle. However, after a few months of playing the main console, they almost always buy a Nintendo console as their secondary.

I don't think Nintendo minds being "third" place as long as the first and second place customers still buy their system. I know I would be happy in Nintendo's shoes.

I've tried playing Eve quite a few times, and it just isn't my thing. Reading about Eve, however, has always been an absolute joy.

Even comments like this (which makes complete sense in hindsight) shows me how much (for better or worse) people put into a "sandbox" or game like Eve.

I swear some of the stories are much better than the stuff they toss in theatres.

I mean there's nothing but gross trees, ugly bluffs, and big dumb cows here.

/nothing to see here. move along people

I can't remember how to login to my FB account (and just don't care to try), so I just set up a spam filter to catch them and delete them. Within the first two months after I stopped logging in, I would receive 20+ e-mails a day from "friends I missed" or whatever. Now it's "only" about 3-5 a week according to spam.

Even when I got printed for the feds (for work reasons), they had to redo most of the fingers.

The first week after he started there, he started to wonder how they could stay in business. He said most of his time (in the 12 years) was spent walking around, cleaning, organizing or just watching TV just because there wasn't anything else to do, and no one coming in.

For years, it was a ghosttown in there. I would go after work (5-6pm), and still not see a single other customer. I know it was a smaller Kmart, but they still had some new items show up, and always had some employees around. Must have made enough to cover most of it's expenses, or been too small for Sears to notice.

/just looked it up. That Kmart closed in Jan of 2017.

/that is around small town USA, so hopefully won't apply to this

The only unofficial thing I used was the cable itself. Once I bought their cable, the switch charges on everything I connect it to now.

Not quite the same issue as burning up my switch (as of now), but issues nonetheless.

The issue was a single bad port on a switch about 3 hours away. It took two days of downtime for them to figure it out.

Now the place I work at just deals with having fibre cut 2-3 hours away and losing a days worth of work for it. At least now I don't have to rely on insiders to tell me what actually is going on. But Centurylink does offer a 4g service for backup connections....

I'm not surprised at all with this. Business as usual for Centurylink.

I'm currently fighting insurance because they won't cover a GI tract test without "proof" from another test first.

OK that's understandable. You don't want random people asking for tests all the time, but the Dr already saw me, and gave me meds to fix the issue that would give the insurance company "proof." There's just new complications now.

So I get to wait until everything comes back in full force. Last time I couldn't work for a few weeks, but hey at least they're saving a few hundred at most now....

This is still a better experience than the issues I had with my jaw. The jaw issues are the only pain in my life that was bad enough I blacked out twice from it. But insurance won't cover that because they think it's a dental issue, dental won't cover it because it's the jaw.

The only treatment for the jaw I got was because a jaw specialist lied on the insurance papers. He said he wrote down headpains, not jaw issues. He said he learned that telling insurance companies the truth is not what gets them to cover their clients.

/sidenote that jaw pain is second to none. It runs circles around any migraines (the dark room, no sound kind) I've ever had. Never knew there was such pain before.

/now I pay a few dollars (no matter if I owe something or if they owe me) near the end of the 90 days those two companies have to figure out how much I owe so I don't have to deal with collections.

I've had it re-enable itself a few times. I'm sure it's due to the extra add-ons and such I use that's messing with it. A few of my friends don't use the same add-ons I use, or they don't use any and have had it happen enough times for them to complain to me about it.

My friend first found out his auto-play was re-enabled after youtube ate up most of his monthly bandwidth cap in one night.

So we're definitely in the minority, but it does seem to happen to different people with very different configurations.

So my 15 minutes $600 allergy appointment that insurance refused to cover (after covering the same damn appointments for 12 years) is that high because of others, or so I keep hearing...

So far, I haven't found any issues with using it. They look the same as your second link. It is some off-brand one.

Every time I went from Canada to America, they looked in my trunk, moved some stuff around back there, and said I could leave.

I still haven't been given any reasons why that happens to me, but my name must be somewhere important.

I just learned to get used to video chatting instead of seeing relatives up there. Much less of a headache.

The search went from touching every point for "weapons" to immediately letting me through. Didn't even finish the pat down. So if you want to get through quicker, eat some taco bell I guess.

Maybe they thought I shit myself, but whatever, some of those bastards are scum. Not all, but enough of them are.

First time they held me for 9 hours before forcing us to go back. They rejected my friend because of an "expunged" disorderly he got when he was 13.

Ok fine, it's their country.

Next time I was held for 5 hours, strip searched, had my car searched (they did a garbage job of it), threw all my stuff on the ground even after knowing there's a $2000+ piece of hardware, then once they were done they told me to "pick up your garbage."

I've also had a gun pulled on me that time, but I could tell that the second CBP that was there saw no reason for any of searches, gun, or anything and he talked her down.

Still not sure why the hell she wouldn't tell me why she wanted to search everything. She said I couldn't leave until she was 100% certain. Certain of what? she wouldn't say.

The last time they searched my car, stripped searched me, threw all my stuff on the ground, and after finding nothing told me to "pick up my garbage."

The bright side is, I was only held for 5 hours that time, but I did have a gun pointed at me. The first time was 9 hours, so maybe next time it will only be 3 hours.

Some people are just pathetic humans who get off on being above anyone else.

/I never had anything illegal any of those times and tried to be very respectful. I worked with law enforcement for many years, and know the type of people that they can deal with.

Also, everyone involved was white, so at least there wasn't racism...? I don't know, it's all dumb. None of my complaints went anywhere, and last time I called they said I "had nothing on file anywhere."

I've also had some hard drives that you could bring back to life by giving them a firm knock with your knuckles too.

Doesn't really answer much, but it's a last ditch effort that has saved me more times than not.

Never tried baking a drive (ssd or hd), but I have with a red ring'd xbox360 mobo.

Sometimes the "low tech" solutions still work.

In the past 3 months, there's been maybe 5 times where I started my laptop and it took 5+ minutes to finish booting. Normally, it's 15 seconds. Once I'm logged in, doing anything takes forever, but it does eventually load. A power off, and back on got it "working" again but who knows for how long.

I've had this drive for 4-5 years now, so I'm impressed it's lasted this long.

On assemblerforums, I remember reading a post from someone who claimed to be from Sega about the DC. He also said they knew from the beginning, but did it anyway. He said most people knew or had an idea that this would be Sega's last console, so they didn't put as much time into DRM and such as they would have.

Could never verify that it was a Sega person, but the way they spoke about stuff led me to believe it was legit.

Back in the early 2000's once it was canned, I always liked to think that it was put there by someone intentionally who knew the system was going to fail. This way piracy would keep the system alive longer than any manufacture would. That piracy part is at least true since some company released a new DC game in the past year or two.

/I want to believe

I stopped buying anything electronic from Amazon because one power to USB adapter burned up, tripped a circuit breaker, and it broke my fridge. Luckily, that was the only other thing I had plugged into that circuit at the time.

Another big issue was my friend bought an Apple power adapter that started smoking after a few hours of it being plugged into the wall.

Scary stuff, especially when you consider anything that goes on or in your body could be counterfeit too.

I believe that is the "doc" I watched a while ago that had some interesting info about TN's asset forfeiture laws.

Even the narrator was saying that the cops are too happy with it. I assume several other states have aggressive asset forfeiture laws as well.

Watching that doc made me hurt just because they show someone going to jail for a few grams of weed, losing their car, the state (I think?) police saying "this will make a fine vehicle for us," and smiling directly to the camera about it saying we don't make the laws (paraphrasing as it's been a while since I saw the doc).

/it still makes me angry just thinking about it

For example, my brother is not techy at all, but he's big into cars.

I asked him if he would enjoy Ford sending everything he's doing in his car to the mothership, then selling that info to insurance companies, or used for "marketing." (immediately he understood the issues)

Then I ask if he's comfortable with knowing that if he accidentally speeds, turns too fast, or breaks too often, he may have to pay more for insurance.

This obviously won't work for everyone. I do have the "i have nothing to hide" friends, but i ask them what if someone DID have something to hide? Not everyone loves "showering with the windows open."

It's fine if they don't care about their lives, but what about their childrens lives, or lives of someone they care about? Once it hits that point, they usually just mention that it isn't important and go off about something else to change the subject.

I've had this happen at a large city in the midwest US.

They basically said, "most people here will break into your car. give us a few bucks and we'll make sure no one does." I didn't want to, but I figured its a few bucks and gave them it.

I got out of the concert and went back to my car. They were still walking around. They ran up and talked to us a bit, said nothing happened, thanked us again for the money and offered us a hamburger from McDonalds.

I'm not sure if they were "good" guys or bad guys yet, but they are around.

For comparison, with insurance in the US my root canal cost about $250 out of pocket.